I was hanging with the wife the other day when we were deciding where to take our next vacation. We thought about the beach, or just going on a little mountain retreat somewhere in Colorado or Utah. We decided that we would like to take a 4 day weekend, and casually make our way to Steamboat, CO to enjoy a summer weekend.

Whelp, the holidays are over and done with, the toys are (mostly) put away in our basement and we’re officially into 2015. Happy New Year, in case I didn’t say it in a previous post. I’ll be honest with all of you, 2014 was a whirlwind year for me. I started a new job, knocked up my wife for the second time (boom!), moved into a new house and was just insanely busy all year long. Sometimes during 2014 I felt like my head was about to explode from stress, it was that crazy.

What does having a toddler do to your house over the Holidays? Well, I can tell you what it does not do, and that’s create any more space. Especially when you have a mother like mine who likes to absolutely spoil her grandkids. Before Christmas, we cleaned the basement head to toe to make sure that we had more room for all the toys that we knew Nana was going to buy our little bundle of fire. We steam cleaned the carpets, cleaned out and threw away boxes. We even had a handyman come in and create the very last bit of storage possible in our house!

Does this picture seem like a pretty good representation of your experience with your vacuum cleaner?

I don’t know about you, but I can’t seem to find a vacuum cleaner for less than a billion dollars that won’t break. They just don’t make ‘em like they used to. In the old days (or so I’ve been told…), you used to buy a product that, if serviced and taken care of properly, would last a lifetime.

I love Thanksgiving. Don’t you? If you don’t love Thanksgiving, you must not love anything – not kittens, not ducklings, nothing. It’s got to be one of the top three, if not the absolute best, holidays of the year. Think about it… here’s a quick list of some of the awesome things you get to do on Thanksgiving:

I don’t know about you, but I was a filthy slob when I was a kid. Hell, I was a filthy slob into my mid-twenties, if I’m really being honest about it. I just didn’t give a rat’s you know what about keeping a clean house. For one, I didn’t really spend much time at my house unless I was playing video games or sleeping, etc., so who was I to care if the dishes weren’t done, there was a beer stain on the couch or the carpet hadn’t been cleaned in months. I had video game bad guys to kill and sleep to get!

Do you have a runny nose, itchy eyes or sneeze all the time like it’s nobody’s business? If you’re like me, you probably chalk this up to having a common cold, and move on with your life. Sure enough, the symptoms go away for a while, and you think the cold is gone. Then when it comes back a few weeks or a month later, you think “Oh, man, I got a cold again. Bummer!” Well, you could have a common cold, but if you don’t clean your carpet, upholstery, furniture or other items in your house enough, it might be microscopic, nasty old dust mites causing your grief.